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How we improved customer retention from 10 to 28% with the addition of a loyalty campaign

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You don’t have to make huge changes to deliver a big impact on your event marketing campaign as we discovered when running an annual conference for one of our technology clients.

Historically organisations had registered members of their IT team to attend as part of their ongoing internal training programmes with a typical repeat registration of 10% year on year. As this was a “pay-to-attend” event we wanted to increase this retention rate with the added goal of encouraging the senior team leaders and CIOs to attend.

Our solution was to introduce a loyalty scheme that required strict criteria to be met in order to become a member with tangible value-adds for those that qualified. The benefits included a “senior manager” limited complimentary place for nominations that could demonstrate they were decision makers. The criteria were as follows:

• The customer had attended the event within the previous 3 years and/or

• The customer had attended a training course within the previous 2 years

• The senior manager was responsible for a minimum level of annual IT spend and had a number of direct reports.

The results were outstanding. Retention increased from 10% to over 28% and the target of 50 IT decision makers was met.

Here are some suggestions of what a typical loyalty scheme might include:

Format: Personalised loyalty card with unique loyalty number. The card is attached to an A4 folded letter. The letter is posted in a hand written envelope with and details benefits available exclusively to loyalty card holders.

These benefits could include:

• Attendance at a senior manager/loyalty lunch/dinner (to be sponsored)

• Exclusive use of a loyalty lounge providing complimentary drinks, seating and potentially snacks dependent on budget – this could be an area on the show floor or a separate room

• Discount vouchers for relevant training

• Signed copy of the latest client publication for the first 50 delegates that register through the scheme

• Special offer to propose a senior manager within their organisation to receive one of 50 complimentary places. This senior manager would need to complete a questionnaire to qualify them as a decision maker.